There is an old black and white photograph with hundreds of solemn people facing
a river somewhere on a stretch of waterfront of the Lower East Side or Brooklyn
holding prayer book in one hand and small pieces of bread in the other. Judging
by the way they are dressed, the women in simple, long dresses with their hair
tightly pulled back into buns covered with lace and the men with wide-brimmed,
black hats in dark suits, the photograph must have been taken at the very
beginning of the 20th century, most likely before the First World
War.

Puzzled by the image, Josh Shapiro had always wanted to take part in the ritual,
but thought it had died out. Thus, when few years back, it was announced that
the congregants of the synagogue he attended for the High Holydays would be
meeting in the early afternoon of Rosh Hashanah to perform Tashlich,
he was determined to join the group.

But
he and his wife Rachel never did. Utterly exhausted by the hours of intense
prayers with another full day to go and Yom Kippur only a week away, by
the first afternoon they had no desire to get dressed up again, walk back to the
synagogue, and then, with the congregation and the Rabbi, trudge to the closest
body of water to symbolically cast off their sins.

Their Rabbi’s repeated insistence that Tashlich was just a folk custom
and not a crucial commandment, made it easier not to follow the ancient practice
of throwing bread crumbs into open water in order to free themselves from the
past year’s transgressions.

The
first day of Rosh Hashanah ushering the year 5771, marked the beginning
of another glorious New England fall in Brookline, MA of 2010. The balmy air and
luminous leaves just starting to turn under the bright, autumnal sunlight seemed
like an ideal moment for overcoming their usual inertia and taking advantage of
the brief hike to get rid of their accumulated sins. Being able to project into
each crumb of bread any sin they deemed offensive, they had decided two slices
neatly wrapped in a plastic sandwich bag would suffice.

Before they left, Josh googled “Tashlich,” and was surprised by how many
entries there were. He wanted to print a brief prayer in English, Hebrew and its
transliteration, not certain whether the synagogue would provide any materials.

As he surfed through the headings, Josh stumbled upon a lively Tashlich
discussion forum run by a well-known rabbi. One of the participants wanted to
know why it is preferable to do Tashlich
by a river that has fish? Just as fish are suddenly caught in nets, was the
Rabbi’s answer, so too we are caught in the net of judgment for life or death.
Such thoughts should stir a person to repentance. The answer seemed poignant to
Josh.

The second response regarding the
same question stated we need fish to protect us from the evil eye, just as the
fish hidden under the water are immune to it. This made less sense, but was
still more or less acceptable.

The third explanation that their
presence in the water symbolizes our hope to be fruitful and multiply like fish
sounded utterly illogical. Josh could see no connection between their sins and
fecundity, especially in regard to fish.

The column continued with a series
of further questions. Vying with each other in anticipation of perceived
obstacles the participants seemed to be reveling in advance at the
insurmountable, final disaster that would prevent them from conducting the
ritual.

One of the readers wanted to know
what if the river had no fish? Tashlich still may be said there. What if the
closest river is far from one's home? If the river can be seen in the distance
Tashlich may still be said.What if there is no river at all in the
vicinity? One may go to any natural body of water e.g. a spring, well, lake, or
pond. Some say Tashlich by a mikveh.What if one cannot find a natural
body of water? He may say prayers by any collection of water, e.g. aquarium or a
container of water. What if there is no natural body of water, no mikveh and one
doesn’t have an aquarium, yet another reader inquired further raising the
stakes. Oh, for G-d’s sake! There is an occasional oasis even in the Saharan
desert, notwithstanding the lack of mikveot or aquaria there. Josh had to admire
the unwavering patience of the Rabbi who always tried to find a solution,
although the discussion somewhat dampened his enthusiasm for the ritual.

When at the prescribed time they
walked to the synagogue, a large group of people was already assembled there,
each participant carrying at least one large, plastic bag filled to the brim
with a variety of baked goods. Regardless of their meager two slices of bread,
they didn’t feel any more virtuous than the rest.

As they started walking toward
Beacon Pond, a small nature reserve Josh and Rachel haven’t even known existed,
the flock following the rabbi resembled a destitute nation on a new exodus
struggling to carry all their earthly belongings. That the overflowing bags were
symbols of their sins made the scene even more heartrending.

The group made a sharp turn from the
main boulevard and through an almost hidden passage between two elegant brick
buildings they entered not a back parking lot, but a beautiful grassy area of a
large baseball field and in its corner a fenced off picturesque, miniature pond
surrounded by willows.

A
narrow path made of wooden planks raised over the wet, marshy ground followed
the outline of the pond through lush, almost tropical-looking vegetation
connecting a number of wider observation sites built on sunken pylons above the
water.

On
all other days an occasional visitor would stop there by the balustrade to
observe birds or to admire the vast, weeping willows along the banks by the
water.

Today, any semblance to a quaint nature hideout was gone. His group, led by the
bellwether Rabbi, slowly followed one after the other along the confining path,
carefully bypassing an equally numerous line coming from the opposite direction.
Each observation site was so densely packed with people throwing their sins into
the water in profusion, that his group had to proceed to the next stop, hoping
the earlier arrivals had already exhausted the baked-goods supplies stored at
their feet. Judging by the energetic, leavened cannonades one would have thought
these were the most sinful people on earth.

Had
they been living in an age of miracles, the Brookline’s Beacon Pond would have
been instantly evaporated, transformed, in a flash, into dirty, boiling steam by
divine wrath, destroyed much faster and more thoroughly than Sodom and Gomorra
ever were and the Divine one would never had even bothered to ask for the one
and only righteous man in order to forgive them.

They might have been saved solely by His pity for the collateral damage: ducks,
geese and turtles or some other minor, endangered creature dwelling in the
waters; possibly by the environmental concerns or the desire not to further
lower the prices of the luxury condos abutting the two sides of the pond.

And
what was the symbolic meaning of the assorted items in the baked good abundance?
It would have been too easy to assign certain sins to a lowly bagel. Regardless
of flavor, their round holes encircled in leavened doe, would render any
association much too crude and utterly void of even a semblance of a higher form
of symbolism. Croissants posed a more formidable challenge, though their
flakiness came immediately to mind and he did not deign to ponder on the hidden
meaning of the occasional sticky bun.

The
imprecise quantity of breads in relation to participants’ sins did not leave
much confidence in the causality of their selection. Whether bagels or rugelach,
it was irrelevant to the crowd. They would have brought anything stale or fresh
from their kitchens just for the thrill of throwing it into water.

“Stupid birds,” Josh thought while watching the water fowl relentlessly and
greedily gobbling up the floating bonanza of their soggy, overdunked
transgressions. “The foie gras geese at least don’t have a choice and the
sin of their gluttony-damaged livers could be solely assigned to the animals’
heartless force-feeders.”

With the thick crust of disintegrating pulp, it was impossible to tell whether
fish lived in the murky waters underneath. Not even a strong breeze managed to
ruffle the inert, marred surface to ripples.

They were told fish are essential
for the success of the ritual. Since they have no eyelids, their eyes are always
open symbolizing God’s constant, protective watch over the Jewish people.

Seeing a small flock of overfed,
heavy-bodied geese lazily resting on a steep, grassy bank by the pond with their
eyes closed shut, he had a feeling of having suddenly understood the true,
precise reason for the sad, incorrigible, almost hopeless state of the
contemporary world.